Thursday, July 12, 2007

Things VI: Ladder of Abstraction

Today Ph. and I cobbled this together:

It's a yard game. Goes by ladder golf, bolo toss, or, as it's named on
some web sites, hillbilly horseshoes or Polish horseshoes. I like to think
of it as the Ladder of Abstraction yard game. See, on top of buying the
PVC pipe, fittings, and golf balls, drilling holes in the balls and running rope
through them, cutting the PVC, and joining it all together, I also drafted
another 600 words (a sketchy 2 pages) on the diss. I'm making a crooked path
through the second chapter (all of the others are more or less planned but not
yet written), the chapter that does some lit-reviewy groundwork in four
concept-areas. And today's bit got me up to the point where, tomorrow, I
will begin writing about visual models and distant reading methods in terms of abstraction and speculative instruments. Yes, among other things, this means Ann Berthoff and the Ladder of
Abstraction. I'll try to say more about the dissertation progress in another
entry. For now I only meant to register that the our yard game is so-named
because it is expected to be a generative digression from the summer workload.

For anyone eager to build a Ladder of Abstraction Yard Game set of one's own,
I followed this plan.
We also score the game a bit differently. Each rung from the top on down gets
four, three, and two points, respectively. Landing at least one of the
balls from the tossing thingamabob inside the rectangular footing area wins a point. Play to 21. Going
over 21 brings the frown-faced thrower back to 17. In other words, you
must his 21 exactly to win, just like the basketball game of 21. Also, the wikiHow plan
calls for 14" ropes for the golf balls. This seems a bit short, but they
work decently if the ladders are set up 20' apart. Longer connective ropes (16"?) would
be better for a slightly longer throwing lane of, say, 30'.

"For me, the comedy of struggle and failure is not just part of the fun but an essential element in all amateuring--precisely what distinguishes it from Yeltsin's fishing in a lake that his staff has stocked with 10,000 fish" (84). Wayne Booth, For The Love of It.